The Story of Jazz, 1956

Leading this series is a partial manuscript with handwritten notes and corrections of The Story of Jazz, a first of its kind to lay out broad outlines of jazz history that remained the benchmark work for years to come. Included are the letter granting Stearns a Guggenheim Fellowship from 1950 which he used to get the work underway; correspondence between 1950 through 1963; research and a partial list of sources; a typescript of the dedication, acknowledgments and appendices; promotional material from Oxford University Press; and reviews. This subseries, given the vital significance of the book, suggests that research file for this sweeping book have long been intermixed with other IJS collections and files. Also included in this series are two folders of 11x14" black and white photographs of a party at Stearns's apartment, the East/West Jam Session, on December 17, 1956 in celebrating publication of The Story of Jazz. Among the luminaries seen are a group led Indian sitar virtuoso Ravi Shanker, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Roy Eldridge, Willie "The Lion" Smith, clarinetist Tony Scott, pianist Bobby Scott, and musician and educator Marshall Brown (whose collection resides at IJS). One folder was taken by Life magazine photographer Paul Schutzer; the other thought to be the work of Burt Goldblatt.